It's October which means were contractually obligated to get real
spooky.
Yeah, but there's nothing that says we can't get all gothic and
lush while we get spooky.
So we're taking a look at Bram Stoker's Dracula.
The horror classic written by, well, Bram Stoker has been adapted over and
over again since it was first written in 1897.
But we're looking at the biggest adaptation to give the man credit.
Frances live-ish adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula.
>> Welcome to my home.
>> Fangs at the ready, it's time to ask.
What's Difference?
>> We'll start with the obvious structural difference.
Bram Stoker's novel is epistolary, a collection of letters,
excerpts from diaries, and as is the case with Dracula,
newspaper clippings, ship logs, and even a recorded diary on wax cylinders.
It's like the found footage of books.
Stoker's novel begins with Jonathan Hawker's journal as he travels to
Castle Dracula in the far reaches of Transylvania.
As a solicitor looking to close the purchase of some property in London.
The opening chapters feature a fair bit of back story on the region, and
its people, and superstitions.
>> Come on, get to the bloodsucking.
This is a vampire book, right?
>> Well, yeah, but there's a lot more, so- >> The movie
starts out in 1452 with Gary Oldman's Dracula single-handedly taking down
a barbarian horde in this super cool muscle fiber looking armor.
But the bad guys send a note to Dracula's wife Elisabeta that he'd been killed in
battle so
she throws herself out of the castle to her death causing Dracula to go nuts.
He curses God, stabs a giant stone crucifix and chugs a bunch of blood.
There's like a ton of blood right off the bat.
>> You can't exactly get all that back story by reading someone's diary.
Plus none of that back story is even in the book.
There's no mention of Dracula's centuries old heartbreak.
He's just a vampire, dressed head to toe in black with hairy palms, and
wants to move to London to eat more people.
>> Movie Dracula may have the same motives to start with, and
may also have the same hairy palms.
And so for the first part of the story, the movie stays pretty close to the book.
The characters' journals are used to justified voiceover exposition
throughout the film.
Harker travels across difficult and
terrifying terrain en route to Dracula's castle.
The locals try to warn him, blessing him with gifts to ward off evil before
literally leaving him to the wolves.
The biggest difference comes when Dracula's carriage arrives.
In the movie, it's a scary silent monster type with an extendo-arm that kind of
sweeps Harker into the carriage.
In the book the driver is a little more talkative.
Even making fun of Harker's fellow travelers for being so superstitious.
On the way to the castle the driver also calms down a group of wolves surrounding
the carriage.
It totally spooks Harker.
The book also explains the weird blue thing which apparently shows up at
midnight once a year over spots where treasure has been buried.
But by the time they reached the castle, the driver disappeared for
a long while before Dracula answers the front door.
>> Hello, it is me Dracula, definitely not the driver.
>> The movie sort of hints this might be the case with this extendo-arm shot but
that's all.
Book Harker even catches Dracula setting the table and making the bed himself,
making it super clear Dracula's trying to make it seem like he's still got servants.
But other than that, Harker's stay with Dracula goes pretty much the same way.
He snoops around the castle.
He gradually suspects he's a prisoner and
then gets attacked by Dracula's vampire concubines.
The only addition the film makes is Dracula's recognizing Mina's portrait as
a reincarnation of Elisabetta.
This, along with an opening sequence's worth of Dracula's back story,
become the key differences between the book and the movie.
In both mediums though,
it takes Jonathan Keanu Harker leaping into the river to make his escape.
Meanwhile, back in England, Mina and Lucy, her flirtatious best friend,
are up to pretty much the same thing in the book and the movie.
Lucy fields marriage proposals From Dr. Seward, Arthur Holmwood,
and Quincy, the adventurous Texan with his big knife.
>> So big! (Laugh)
>> She's much more explicitly sexual in
Coppola's version.
You know, a lot happened in a hundred years between the book and the movie.
>> Dracula travels to London in the same way in both mediums.
Because he has to sleep in Transylvanian dirt, he boxes a ton of it up and
has it delivered to his new digs in London and
on the way brutally murders the crew of the ship.
In the movie, he pretty much immediately lures Lucy out to attack her and
just as quickly Mena becomes the object of his obsession.
He runs into her in London and spends an entire afternoon watching the motion
pictures together and breathlessly petting a wolf.
>> This is a wonderful best date.
>> But back at home, Lucy is sucuming to Dracula's bite.
The investigation into Lucy's sickness seems to take up the majority of the book.
Like the movie,
Dr Jack Seward calls his old professor Van Helsing to lend his expertise.
But the case takes a very long time to figure out.
But Van Helsing goes back and forth to Amsterdam several times.
All four of the men tending to Lucy give her blood transfusions,
a procedure that was unusual for the 1890s, but
Dracula continually sneaks back in to feed on Lucy.
Lucy's mom sees him enter one night and dies of a heart attack,
literally on top of Lucy.
Movie Meena, as opposed to her book counterpart, spends some time drinking
absinth and developing a fondness for the mysterious prince she met in the city.
Feeling more and more like she's known him her whole life.
Yeah, none of that is in the book.
They just can't figure out what's up with those holes on Lucy's neck.
Van Helsing of course has his theories but he never just comes out and says it.
He lets his pupils make their guesses and then he tells them they're wrong and
they need to guess again.
In th movie, Van Helsing knows as soon as he sees those holes.
>> Dear God, it's the bizzerker Prince Dracula.
>> Dracula, no.
>> In the book and the movie, Mina goes to Budapest to marry the recently escaped
Jonathan as soon as possible.
Which for book Mina is all great news.
Movie Mina however, is so
taken with Dracula she's at least a little bit conflicted.
Writing a letter of apology to the prince and
destroying the pages of her diary detailing her dalliance with Dracula.
It's also crazy bad news for movie Dracula.
It's because he's lost Mena to Johnathan that he turns into a wolf and
kills the crap out of Lucy.
And here comes some more of that blood, that's a lot of Blood.
After Lucy's death,
book Van Helsing once again takes much greater pains than his movie counterpart.
While ultimately, the stake to the heart and beheading of Lucy plans out the same
way, the book details three other trips to the cemetery.
Even having a chance to kill her, but opting to wait until Arthur could be there
to witness, just to be sure he believed it.
The book also goes into more detail of Lucy's taste for kids, using newspaper
reports that detail a number of missing kids around town who show up with holes in
their necks Based on the stories about an urban legend known as the Bloofer Lady.
>> Bloofer Lady gives me angel kisses on neck.
>> It's at this point in the book and
the movie that the entire crew starts to get thier act together.
Van Helsing, Dr.
Seward, Arthur Quincy and now even newylweds Jonathan and Mena begin to plot.
In the movie it's mostly Jonathan just saying.
>> I know why the bastards >> Sleeps.
I brought her there.
>> In the book, Jonathan and
Mina work hard to organize everybody's diaries into chronological order,
revealing the source of the text we've been reading this whole time.
And with everybody on the same page, they're able to track down and
ruin all the boxes of Transylvanian dirt that Dracula brought with him.
But as the movie guys sterilize the earth at Carfax Abbey,
Dracula pays one last visit to Mina.
And green smokes his way into the sheets.
Dracula gives Mina the whole picture of exactly what he is making sure she knows
what she's signing up for when she claims to want to be with him forever.
Again this is the central conflict of the film.
Even though he's a gross Lucy murdering vampire monster.
Mina is in love with Dracula and is discovering that she has been for
hundreds of years It's this love that convinces Dracula to
turn her into a vampire, and it is a way sexier process than it is in the book.
That's, that's just sex that they're having right there.
In both the book and the movie the calvary arrives in time to run him off, and
Dracula escapes running back to Transylvania.
(Sound) Our heros then have to track him down in a race to destroy him.
The book provides much more detail along the way.
The team splits up much sooner some go by steamer ships, some by train.
In both, though, Van Helsing takes advantage of the psychic connection
between Nina and Dracula in order to track the vampire's movements.
But that plan backfires when they discover that Dracula's been doing the same thing.
To evade his pursuers, just like Harry Potter in the Order of the Phoenix when
Harry was peeking into Voldemort's mind but Voldemort uses that same connection
to trick Harry and the gang into going into the Department of Mysteries,
a plot which also features Gary Oldman.
Yeah, just like that.
Mena and make a last leg of their journey
(Music) On their own.
Confronted by Dracula's three brides along the way.
But Van Helsing relieving them of their heads.
>> You won't be needing those.
>> The final pursuit of Dracula's finds Harkers, Seward,
Quincy and Aurthur all chasing Dracula's carriage.
Racing the horses and the sunset.
Right up to the gates of Castle Dracula.
In the movie Dracula uses Mina to cast this crazy spell to help the sun go Down
quicker, but the mechanics of the scene are pretty consistent with the books,
right down to Quincy getting mortally wounded in the final fight before stabbing
Dracula in the heart with his big-ass Texan knife.
But the rest allow Mina and Dracula to go into the castle.
In the book, as soon as Quincy's knife drives into Dracula's heart.
The vampire immediately turns to dust.
Mina is released from Dracula's curse.
They mourn a little for Quincy and then that's it.
There's one last prologue to Jonathan's journal dated seven years later.
They're happy and even have a kid they named after literally all the dudes that
helped them defeat Dracula.
The movie, however, ends back where it started,
on the steps in the chapel Mina and Dracula say their goodbyes and then, Jeez!
Yeah, that's tough to do to a loved one, especially when, aah!
Wow, wow, yeah, he's dead now.
Okay, so that's how it ends, the love Mina discovered for
Dracula freeing them both of the curse that began 400 years earlier.
>> So while the book is a collection of first hand accounts of
a monster trying to spread >> The particular
must have been amongst the populace of London by adding just one broken heart,
the movie becomes a gothic romance spanning centuries.
Now, I'm off to Google did people think Dracula was true when it first came
out like it sort of did like the Blair Witch Project?
>> Well, that's interesting. Yeah, let me know if you find anything--
>> I'm back.
And nope. Doesn't seem like they did.
>> because they didn't have a digital present?
>> Well, that's settled then.
That's it for this spooky episode.
Be sure to subscribe to Cinefix for more what's the difference.
All right, I did the spooky voice, where is my money?
Got to get that check, got to get it caged.
(Music)